


Landlocked Lovers

by IzzyAguecheek



Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: M/M, i guess i have the right, i've spent months crying over those losers so, not of the others though, spoilers of the vampire lestat and interview with the vampire, wow i just made myself sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 17:40:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10313561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IzzyAguecheek/pseuds/IzzyAguecheek
Summary: Hanging padlocks on a a bridge to represent eternal love or in memory of a lost loved one is an old european habit. In a cold night, Louis and Lestat go to Paris to follow the tradition.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first time posting on AO3 and i have literally no idea what i'm doing. Also, english isn't my first language, but i've read The Vampire Chronicles in english and couldn't imagining writing this in my native language - so let me know if i've made any mistakes. I wrote this after a trip during which I just couldn't stop thinking about these two, but I'm not quite sure the locations are a 100% accurate. So you might have to forgive me for that as well. Also i calculated Nicki's death's date based on the date Louis became a vampire, so i might be wrong about that too.  
> Title taken from my ultimate Nicki/Lestat song, "Brothers on a Hotel Bed" by Death Cab For Cutie.

_February, 2017_

 

Hanging padlocks on the so-called lover bridge was strictly forbidden. The French government had declared the prohibition after the weight of the lovers’ vows, metaphorically speaking, had made a part of the structure fall. The 100 year-old tradition was now over.

Well, theoretically. You know how lovers are.

Not that this meant much to me. If anything, it made the idea even more appealing. It was Louis, of course, who reminded me of all of this as we walked through the cold night.

“My dear Louis”, I told him, without slowing down. “You know what I have to say about these rules.”

Louis sighed. He didn’t seem upset. In fact, he seemed as entranced as I was by the concept, only he was also a little scared.

“They will be removed”, he warned me.

“We’ll hang them again”, I said. I didn’t really mean it. We couldn’t possibly add new padlocks every time the old ones got removed. And, at some point, they wouldn’t be removed anymore. We would last longer than this. One day, no one would remember this little curious tradition. That is, no one but us. The idea depressed me, though there was also something alluring about it. “Come on.”

We marched through the Square Jean XXIII, completely empty and hauntingly silent in the way human places can only be in the middle of a winter night. Behind us, the shape of Notre-Dame seemed surprisingly blurred. Maybe it was because I couldn’t look at it. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to have to think about how the cathedral was like in the old days, or anything that happened there. The first time I met Armand, and everything that followed.

Yet I was here, wasn’t I? Because of what had happened then. I could have chosen any place in the entire France. I could have chosen our little village in Auvergne, whatever had become of it now. It wasn’t as traditional, but I wasn’t there for the tradition; it would have been as good as any other place. Why, I could have climbed to the very top of the Eiffel Tower, had I chosen to do so, and then I would hang the little padlock in my pocket in a place where no police officer could reach it. I could have the dream of all those romantics who were still breaking the prohibition all around Paris.

But the Eiffel Tower didn’t exist back then. My poor Nicki didn’t live to see it being built, to see it become the symbol of the city we both so adored.

And about our village in Auvergne, it had never been much more than a place to escape from. Besides, I had Louis with me. He had never been to Auvergne, but he had his own ghosts to deal with in Paris.

So on we went. Past the shadow of Notre-Dame, past the statues on the Square, until we got to the Pont de L’Archevêché.

Now, let me say the obvious: I was not the only one who didn’t care about the prohibition. This became clear as we walked, even before we arrived at the bridge. The padlocks were all over the side of the square that followed the Sena, in all shapes and forms. Most were shiny and new, some fancy and some completely ordinary. Some had entire names and dates. Some had only initials. They piled up on the fence next to the bushes, almost hidden, but not quite.

I could have spent years passing my fingers through them, trying to figure out their stories. This odd human tradition intrigued me since the very first time I had heard about it, back in the early 20th century: such a simple symbolism it can almost be called cheap, and people still adored it as feverously as they did a hundred years ago. An eternal love vow or a tribute to a lost loved one; hang it on the bridge and throw the key into the water. Maybe the reason it was still so popular was that the instructions were so simple to follow.

I was beyond sad to discover it had been forbidden, but then again, that’s what amazed me the most about it: it was so persistent. Human beings are so desperate to trust in things that will last longer than themselves they will cover enormous distances and defy the law for such a simple thing as a padlock or a photograph.

Louis made me stop when we got to the middle of the bridge. When I looked at him, there was no trace of the hesitation from before. He seemed only determined, and impossibly sad. I took a minute to wonder if my expression looked anything like his, for I had the impression we felt pretty much the same way, then I turned around to face the river and pulled the padlock out of my pocket.

I had thought about picking a red one, the type that seemed to be the favorite of all human couples, but had ended up choosing the most ordinary of all, bronze colored and small, the kind people would use to chain their bikes or lock up their gates. I examined the letters and numbers I had carved myself: _Nicolas de Lenfent, 1781._ Not his birth, but his death. I wondered briefly if the mortals would ever question the date, and the idea brought a smile to my lips.

Besides me, Louis held his own padlock. Unlike me, he had brought a flat, almost heart shaped one, the bright pink metal shining in the moonlight. With his elegant handwriting, he had carved only one word: _Claudia._ No date.

“We could put it somewhere else”, I said, suddenly. I was referring to his padlock only, and I think he knew it. For some reason, the idea of actually hanging their names together made me anxious. “At the very top of the tower. She would like it, wouldn’t she?”

Louis just shook his head, without a word.

Carefully, I opened the padlock and hung it on the bars on the side of the bridge. Then I threw the key into the water in one fluid motion, and that was it. I waited for thunder or lightning or something, but there was only silence and the sudden realization that this, this performance of a human tradition we were doing, was, in fact, meaningless.

Louis had hung Claudia’s padlock a few feet away from Nicki’s, and, as he reproached me, I heard he whispering a goodbye. That reminded me that I had never gotten the chance to say goodbye to Nicolas - or to Claudia, for that matter -, and it was my fault Louis had to do it now. I thought about saying my own farewell, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was too afraid it would sound empty. So, I turned to Louis instead.

“Should we hang one for ourselves?”, I asked, jokingly. Louis seemed about to star weeping, but he smiled at me anyway.

“What is eternal love for eternal beings?”

I didn’t want to remind him Nicki and Claudia had once been eternal, too. So I said nothing.

“Eternal love is not for us, Lestat”, he continued. “You know that.”

I wished he hadn’t said that, but once again he was right. I wished to go back in time, but then I had wished this countless times before, and it hadn’t changed anything. I took one last look at the padlocks glistening in the soft light, then turned my back on them and started heading to Notre-Dame.

“Come on”, I said. “Let’s go home.”

What a strange concept, home. Did creatures like us really had a home? I thought about everything that had ever meant this word to me: my father’s castle in Auvergne, the Theater of the Vampires, this very Paris, and finally the house at the Rue Royale in New Orleans. My home with Nicki when I was human, then my home with Louis and Claudia. Home was precisely the reason we had done this. It was our own metaphorical way of selling a childhood house and turning in the keys to someone else.

Again, Louis didn’t say a word. I knew he was looking back at the padlocks, wondering if we would ever return to this place. I didn’t say it, but I didn’t think so. The house had been sold; I had the feeling I should never return to Paris again.

Finally, we arrived back to Square Jean XXIII. I put my arms around Louis, who clung to me without protesting. I let him take one last look in the bridge’s direction, feeling the despair all around him like an aura. Then, I closed my eyes, and we took off.


End file.
